The Haunted Airman

Paralysed during a bombing run over an enemy city, Toby Jugg is sent to a remote recovery centre run by Dr Hal Burns to rehabilitate himself mentally as well as receiving physical therapy from Sister Grant. Jugg does want to be here, he wants to be home with his love, Julia, but the gates are locked and she isn't even writing to him. While Burns continues to offer him treatment, Jugg starts to believe that all is not as it seems.

I'm all for a good ghost story because, although I do scare quite easily, the reason I tend to avoid horror movies is the gore they provide in place of genuine chills. Screened as part of BBC4's season of ghost stories, I did hope for more from The haunted Airman – more than modern "scary" movies but also more than it actually managed to deliver. Most of the problems belong in the delivery of what does seem like it could have been a very interesting story, with plenty of layering and material there to work with. Unfortunately writer/director Durlacher doesn't really seem to know what to do with it.

Is he playing out a character story on a foundation of eerie uncertainty or is it something else? It is hard to say as the film doesn't seem to settle on the strengths very often and funnily the character aspect is something that seems to happen despite Durlacher, not because of him. While he stumbles over this, he also delivers flat and obvious moments in the mistaken belief that they are creepy. At their best these do work but even then they are pretty clichéd and obvious; at their worst they smack of a total lack of imagination with easy tricks that don't have the desired effect.

The acting doesn't help, although again I suspect the performances are hurt by Durlacher not having a grip on everything. Pattinson is roundly poor and I found his performance to be part of undoing the potential in the character stuff. The dread Sands just looms around the place unsure of what he is doing but trying to have a mysterious twinkle in his eyes just in case it is important. Stirling, Lloyd and others end up hanging around the scenes with the purposeful presence of extras.

Overall then an average film at best. The story seems to offer potential but the delivery lacks focus and appears to have been constructed scene by scene, with only the aims of the here and now being considered. It felt like this was also part of the techniques used being obvious and ineffective in pulling the viewer into the film. Not awful, just really quite pointless and uninspiring.

First, let me say that I had not seen Twilight when I originally rented this back in 2009 (and the only reason I am writing this now is because this atrocity was on chiller last night). I got it out of Redbox and watched it with my brother for an annual movie night.

Second, I'm a huge movie watcher. There's rarely a movie I don't like because I can find something to like about it.

This is not one of those movies. In fact, can this even be considered a movie?? It's like someone in Britain said, "Hey, this guy is somewhat good looking so we need to make a movie with him in it that's based on a great book. While we're at it, let's throw the scrabble letters against the wall every time we want some dialogue in this 'movie' and that will be what the actors say." If this was the case...mission accomplished.

I honestly can't even begin to describe how horrible this movie is. To name the bad things that 1) happened in the movie, 2) how the movie was made, and 3) what the movie is about would be a massive list that I neither have the time nor the patience to write. If you want to know what's the worst part about it - cast wise to the direction, editing, script, etc.- I would answer you, "All of it. Literally." I actually asked my brother if he would turn if off because not only was I bored to near sleep, but I was incredibly confused at the ending. I kept waiting for a real one to come up.

Whoever thought this movie was a great idea not only needs to be banned for life from everything media but needs to be told not to base a concept of a movie from his drug - induced, scrabble letter throwing haze.

What an awful movie!! I could barely manage to watch it for the hour it lasted — any longer and it would've been off.

Low-budget I can handle. Weak supporting performances, poor special effects, bad editing… OK, fine. But there is no way to get past a film that is painstakingly slow, boring, and completely lacking a plot (or even an explanation)! Nothing happened! I watched the whole thing and still couldn't really say what it was about. Basically it's a guy who's scared of the shadows. Is he crazy? Why is he in a mental hospital? Is he imagining the spiders and the moving shadows? Who knows — or, more importantly, who cares? Sorry, but a slightly moving shadow on the floor in the middle of the night means nothing, especially when the curtains are open; it's probably just a branch moving outside the window.

Robert Pattinson is attractive as ever and turns in a pretty good performance, but there was no way he could salvage this piece of crap.

My response in a nutshell: yeah, it was only an hour lost…but I can think of so many better and more interesting things I could have done in that hour. Like, the dishes.

A disabled and traumatised WW2 airman is sent to a convalescent home in Wales, where his mental health gradually degenerates as a result of disturbing hallucinations, and growing suspicions that the doctor in charge may not be as benevolent as he at first seems.

Though billed as being based on The Dennis Wheatley story 'The Haunting of Toby Jugg', the relationship is a highly tenuous one. Unlike the book, this is a psychological drama with no hint of the supernatural, and while the technical quality of the filming is very good, it is very, very slow-paced and, at the end, downright confusing. I can only guess that the film's makers were trying to emulate the ambiguous nature of 'The Turn of the Screw', but this is not in the same class at all.

If you liked the book, I can't recommend it. As a psychological chiller it certainly has some unsettling moments, but on the whole it is far too slow and uninvolving.

Yet another reminder that the Dennis Wheatley novels may well be a very good read (or they were, many years ago) but that they invariably make (or are made into) pretty crappy movies. I don't even remember if I actually read "The Haunting Of Toby Jugg" myself or just have an awareness of it and think I did, so I can't compare in this case and just took the movie on its own merits.

It was ostensibly very well made (props, camera-work, location, lighting &c.) and the acting is difficult to fault, in fairness, but disappointingly the storyline was not entirely free of some fairly well-worn clichés and dragged on without going anywhere much for so damn long I was ready for just about any ending just to get it over with. Which is just as well - the ending was such a mess it was almost a case of 'Times's up, please hurry up and vacate the lot, we need it for someone else!' and it was neither particularly satisfying or shocking when it did finally arrive....

The whole thing was pretty much a letdown like a sandwich with little or no filling - a pity really, it could have been so much better if it had tried a little less hard to be weird and suspenseful!